Well here we are in 2014, with new places to go and new drinks to taste !

I have been spending all my money on shiny new video equipment, (much to my wife's disgust), and believe that I can probably film things and share them with you a lot easier than I can write about them. Therefore "A View From The Bar" will be much more video heavy and text light.

Well here we go then !

One night in Glasgow provided me with the following films:

1. Tasting Glenmorangie Single Malt Whisky at "The Pot Still", which is in Hope Street, Glasgow

2. Tasting recommendations from Frank, The Bearded Barman, at "The Pot Still"

Talking to John Henderson, Owner of the "Scottish Borders Brewery" at a meet the brewer night in "Munro's", Great Western Road, Glasgow.

I also recently filmed a Belhaven Black review at my local pub, "The Masonic Arms", Broxburn

And just for good measure, for no other reason at all - Here's a joke about a dog

If you would like to see more clips then please subscribe to my Youtube Channel: TheDrinkingMansGuide ToScotland.

Cheers

Life has been hectic over the past few months, where do I start.........

I went to All Bar one in Edinburgh, Lothian Road, to celebrate my friend Gillian's 40th birthday. This was a great afternoon / night out as I was with my wife, pictured below, and a whole lot of friends. The bar itself is usually full of suits from the surrounding offices and a bit sterile, but on this occasion it felt very friendly with enough staff to keep us fed and watered. The range of lagers and wines is good, but its lacking a real ale range. Worth a visit, but as you would expect it is much the same as any other All Bar One.

In October I went to work in France, Lyon, at a pharmaceutical conference for 10 days. This was a large conference and took a large crew, some of whom are pictured below, three days to build. The hotel we were staying at was a long way out of town and unfortunately there were no bars near to us, so we spent a lot of the nights in the hotel bar. The best beer that they had, to my taste, was Beck's Vier. Hmmmm....

This is me, below, at the Lyon Congress Center.

On the last day of the conference, just before we broke the stand down, I came backanother part of the event and found this on the video wall !! This really made my day as this video wall is huge ! and it takes a bit of time and effort to put the slide together. Thanks to the guys that did this.

If you don't know what the "Tartan Pint" is, I've written a book called "The Tartan Pint" which is all about all the beer and breweries in Scotland. The book is available from Amazon - check it out.

The night before we flew home we had a night out in the old town of Lyon. The picture below shows some of the crew in a pub called "The Smoking Dog". This is a typical small French pub with a great selection of beers and wines. It had a beautiful laid back feel which I enjoyed, so we had a few drinks here.

We then moved onto a great restaraunt in an even older part of Lyon. The food here was some of the best I have ever tasted ! I even made the manager get the chef out of the kitchen so I could tell him how much I'd loved his food.

In November I started working on a roadshow for a large bank which lasts until the end of February 2013 ! It takes me all over England, Wales and Scotland so I'm looking forward to getting to some great new pubs and trying some great new drinks.

It has been a very busy couple of months with work taking me to some far away places, this has given me the opportunity to try a lot of new beers and find some great new pubs !

I was working at Heathrow for a couple of days at the start of May and I went to a pub called "The White Horse". This pub is just beside the airport and if you are staying at any of the large hotels close by then ask at reception and they will send a car to pick you up. Then, at the end of the night, they will take you back to your hotel. This is free if you are having a meal there, or there are a few of you. I liked this pub as the food was good and the selection of beers were ok, but most of all it is a real pub, not a rubbish, expensive hotel bar.

Later in May I worked at Hampden football ground, this was for a conference. I didn't get a chance to try any of the local bars but I did get to hear my name over the P.A. in the ground !!

At the end of the conference at Hampden there was some sunny weather, so that weekend I went to a friends house for a barbecue. When he brought out some cold beers from the fridge he announced that he had found some bottles of home brew from around 10 years ago, YES 10 YEARS AGO. We looked at the bottles, they seemed to be properly sealed, we opened a bottle and poured it into a glass, it looked and smelt ok so we tried it, it was lovely !! Very smooth with a silky finish. Although we weren't brave enough to try a second bottle.

At the beginning of June I went back to work in Prague at another nine day event. This time we found a great Irish pub just off Wencesless Square. The name of the pub is Rocky O'Reillys. If you go then you should have the platter, its huge !!! and will take 4 people to eat it. The beers are the same as you would find in any Irish pub but the welcome is great !! We had a good couple of nights out here and I recommend it.

When in Prague I also had a trip out to a shooting range, "The Magnum", where I shot a Magnum 44 hand gun and a Kalashnikov semi automatic rifle. It's not the kind of thing I do often, but it was kind of fun.

The day after I got back from Prague I was working at the opening of the new Deanston Distillery Visitors Centre. This place is well worth a visit, it has a good tour, gift shop and does not look like your stereotypical distillery. It was in fact a mill until the 1960's (I think) and was then bought and turned into a distillery. At the opening I met Neil Oliver and one of the actresses from the new film, "The Angels Share", (unfortunately I can't remember her name). A lot of the film was filmed at the Deanston Distillery.

A few days after the opening at Deanston I was back on the road. This time I was at the Cameron House Hotel on the shores of Loch Lomond.

This is a beautiful place and if you can I urge you to visit. The job also involved putting a PA into "The Boathouse", this is a great restaurant and bar right on the shores of Loch Lomond. Check out the photos below, the first one was the view from my room and the last one was taken at the barbecue at the boathouse.

Towards the end of June I spent three days working in Dublin. We managed out on one of the nights and ended up in the Grafton Street area. This is a great area to go out in as it has loads of great pubs and restaurants. The first place we went to was "Peters Pub", a very well run pub with friendly staff and excellent beer. We then had a meal, I can't remember the name of the restaurant, and headed on to the "International Bar". This bar had a group of musicians playing various types of music, I joined in playing a song on the guitar and singing. They were far more talented than me but let me have a go anyway.

The Scottish Real Ale Festival was held at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh this year and as you might imagine I made time to go along and try some new beers. I went with my good friend Duncan on the Saturday and we made our way through lots of different types of beer from many different breweries. I think my favourite this year is the "Cart Noir" from the Kelburn Brewery closely followed by the "Talorcan" from the Deeside Brewery. Check out the photos and video taken at the event.

This is March and time is marching on........ The first thing I must do is apologise for not updating the blog in February, but when you see what I've been up to you'll probably realize why !

Work is incredibly busy, I've been working away from home a lot over the last six weeks. The first trip was to Liverpool where I was working at the ACC arena for a week. This was a great conference to work on and I had a number of chances to go out and see what Liverpool has to offer. I went to the Cavern pub on the Sunday night with a good friend, J.B., and we saw an excellent band and had a few Guinness and some more local ales. Over the course of the week we went to various other pubs around the Mathew Street area, including the oldest pub in Liverpool, "Ye Hole in Ye Wall", where I had a pint of "Silver Moon" which is a porter and was beautifully smooth. At the end of the week we went to the Cavern Club, (you know the one - where The Beatles used to play), and saw another band, it was a good night out but not as lively as the Cavern pub across the road. The picture on the right is J.B. and me in the Cavern Club.

When I got back home from Liverpool I only had a few days at home before my next job so I decided to have a day out with my family.

We went to the Wallace Monument in Stirling, we took in the views and had a great packed lunch out in the open, then we went onto Stirling Castle. Both of these places are well worth a visit. We spent hours in the castle and could have spent more time there but decided to call it a day and go and get some food. On our way out I stopped at the gift shop and saw that they had a reasonable choice of whiskys, check out the pictures below. The first two pictures were taken at the Wallace Monument, the next two were taken at Stirling Castle.

Just outside Stirling Castle is a pub called "The Portcullis", this is where we went for a meal. I would really recommend this place as they had some great real ales, the menu was large and the food was great ! they even let me behind the bar for a few photo's. There will be a review of this pub on the site soon !

A day later I was on a plane to Miami.

I worked at a pharmaceutical conference there for nine days. We only had a couple of chances to go out as this was a full on conference. Below are some photo's and a video. the first photo was taken during the build and is in the main room, the beach photo was taken as we, me and J.B., walked to work in the morning and the video shows the out door venue for the gala dinner.

On the few occasions we did get out we went to a few bars and a club. The first bar we found was on Lincoln Drive and it was a German bar, as I wanted to drink more than a 330ml bottle at a time we got a few large beers. We moved to a club on Ocean Drive called the Clevlander which was loud and lively. Most of the beers I came across in America were the usual suspects, Bud, Miller, San Miguel, etc with a lot of "light" versions - but my favorite was Samuel Adams. A few days later, on my way home, at the airport, I had my last Samual Adams of the trip at Bongos Cuban Cafe.

When I got back from Miami, on the 25th of Feb I had a whole two days to recover from the jet lag before I was on the road again. This time I was working in Glasgow and Manchester - on a medical roadshow. When in Glasgow I took some of the crew to "The Horseshoe Bar" and also to Waxy O'Connors, where we enjoyed the beer and the Glasgow hospitality. I introduced some of them to "Bitter and Twisted", by the Harviestoun Brewery, which went down very well !

In Manchester we didn't have time to go into town, we were working at an airport hotel, but we did get invited to the gala dinner. On my way home I had a couple of cheeky pints, Guinness, at the airport.

I am writing this blog at the SECC in Glasgow where I'm currently working at a Diabetes conference and there is more travel on the way !!! - see next months blog .

Sales of my book "The Tartan Pint" have been disappointing, this may be due to the fact it is only available as a download. However, I was recently working at a book sellers event and managed to talk to some publishers about it. One of the publishers is interested in it so there may be a paperback edition on its way - although this may take some time.

Until next time !!!

P.S. if you have any comments about the blog, or any questions, or just want to get in touch then please contact me. You can do this through the contacts page on the web site.

I went to the Scottish Real Ale Festival last Thursday with my good mate, Stuart. We both enjoyed the festival and drank some great beers. We also managed to talk to a few brewers from around Scotland. Check out the video below for a flavour of the event. Cheers !!!

As the title of this post is "a busy couple of weeks" you might understand that I've just not had the time to get organised. I have gone from full time employment, (I was the senior audio visual technician at the RBS conference center, Gogarburn), to being freelance again and I'm busy but enjoying the work.

I have managed to fit in a few visits to a brewery and some pubs over the last two weeks. One of the highlights was a visit to Stewart Brewing, at their brewery in Loanhead on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I was visiting another company in the area about freelance work and took the opportunity to pop in. I met Jo Stewart, co owner of Stewart Brewing, and she was kind enough to give me a guided tour of the brewery, which I filmed. Check out the clip below:

Last weekend was the start to this years six nations rugby. Scotland were playing France, (in France), so I decided it was a good excuse to go for a few beers with my mate John. We decide not to go into Edinburgh this time as there would be no rugby supporters there, so we went to South Queensferry. This small town has a lot of history behind it, with some of the pubs dating back to 1683 and others being mentioned in famous novels by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson. We started at one end of the old high street and steadily, (well steadily at first), made our way to the other side. The first pub we went to was the "Hawes Inn". Check out the clip below:

After the dissapointment of the Hawes Inn we moved along the high street to a small pub, (its a snug really), called the "Anchor Inn". This bar was small, its about the same size as a large living room from an ordinary house, but I liked it. It was full of locals talking, reading the paper and relaxing. There was no music but it had a decent sized screen for watching the sports and the bar maid was very helpful. I ordered the round, spoke to john and just as I was taking my jacket off she brought the drinks over to us. We only had one drink here, (I wanted a few screens to watch the rugby), then moved onto the "Ferry Tap". Check out the clip below:

The rugby started, we watched the first half, Scotland were not playing well - at all. We then decided to go to a bar with smaller screens as we didn't want to see the game in any detail. We went to the bar at "Orocco Pier", (this is also a restaurant which is well worth a visit). It was a different atmosphere all together, more up market and aimed at coffee drinkers during the day and couples at night. It was also by far the most expensive round of the night - not a problem to me as it was John's turn to buy !!! Check out the clip below:

We stayed here for a while then moved onto two other pubs in the high street, the "Stag Inn" and the "Moorings". The Stag is very much a down to earth locals bar with the standard range of drinks and a friendly enough feel to it. The Moorings was OK but a bit run down. I believe it is about to close for refurbishment. There are clips filmed in both of these pubs, but as it was now quite late in the evening they were not very good, even I can't make out what I was saying !!!

I am looking forward to next weekend as Scotland is playing Wales at Murrayfield - Anybody fancy a pint in Edinburgh ?